The Story

From the back of the book:

The Driftwood Saga continues in an exciting adventure full of ghosts, goddesses, giants, magical creatures, time travel and camp games.

Summoned by the ghost of a slain boy, Driftwood the young magician and her best friend, Rose, journey to Africa to free children from a slave cocoa farm. Another tortured spirit then leads them to China in an attempt to free young factory workers. Meanwhile, Hans Blekansit, Driftwood’s evil father, is turning his employees into giants that roam the country eating forests and mountains to spew out Blekan-Marts, stores which are selling cheap products created by enslaved children. Will Driftwood be able to grapple with the complex problems and monstrous forces that confront her at every turn?

The Response

You know how some stories are really good stories but you still manage to come away from the book learning something new? I really like those kinds of stories.

You know how some stories just read like they are trying to teach you something and that the story is just a means to get there, and so you just feel like what the author wants to teach you is being banged across your forehead with a huge “HEY! THIS IS SOME BAD STUFF!” sign on it? I really don’t like those kinds of stories.

Unfortunately, that was the kind of story that this book was.

I wanted to really like it. I did! I had enjoyed the first and hoped this would be more along those same lines. But it’s hard to really get into something when, even though I totally agree with the author and know he’s right, the book keeps telling me, “hey, have you gotten this yet? Slavery is really Not Cool.” It was so distracting from the actual story, and as a result the character growth and plot development totally suffered.

Which is a pity, because there are so many amazing characters in this book – not just Driftwood and her camp friends, but also the older magic-workers in this book: Old Bart, Murph and Hermit (the Laughing Man). In fact, Hermit’s backstory was by far the most interesting part of this whole book! We get to learn who he really is, and why he decided to give up all his worldly possessions and just live out on the street. Learning who he was in the past added a VERY interesting layer to this series. I cannot wait to see how this plays out in future books. It should be highly entertaining!

The continued development of Driftwood felt a little stilted – she meets her grandparents and her cousin for the first time, and immediately they act like they’ve known each other for years. There’s none of that in-between time where the characters are getting to know each other, and I think Davidge cheated us out of this a little bit. I mean, where’s the mystery, the thrill of learning about a new character, what they’re like, whether they will be there to help our main character out? It didn’t feel REAL.

In fact, the whole in-between stage was missed out on a lot of things in this book. For example, Driftwood finds her mother’s journals, and learns something shocking in them. But it’s not really developed until the very end of the book when Driftwood confronts her uncle about it. We’re told it bothers Driftwood, but we don’t get to actually SEE it bother her. I’m also wondering why the author brought this bit of information about Driftwood’s mother into the story at all – I’m actually really hoping that the author carries this part of the story out further in the series, because it could definitely be developed into something really good.

The Bottom Line

I was disappointed in this one. It’s not as strong as the first in the series, and it felt too much like the author was telling us crazy important stuff, not showing it to us or leading us to the truth about situations. I really hope that I enjoy the third one much better than this.

The Story

From the cover of the book:

It was during a normally quiet day on Ellesmere Island that Old Bart was interrupted by a pregnant woman floating towards him in an old rowboat. The woman came on shore, quickly gave birth to a wee girl and died shortly after. The orphaned Driftwood Ellesmere was raised by Old Bart, Clara the Maid and Wilson the Cook in the Toque and Mitt Inn, the most northern hotel in the world.

Not until she is sixteen does Driftwood leave the island for the first time to begin working as a counselor at Camp Magee in British Columbia. Her fun with her new camp friends is interrupted when the last session of kids arrive all entirely addicted to small video game boxes. None will do a single outdoor activity. They growl and try to bite if anyone interrupts the playing of their repetitive consoles. Why is a shy young northern girl the only hope to free these children from their electronic chains?

The Response

I bought all five books in the series at FanExpo this summer after seeing Davidge speak on a couple of panels – I was intrigued by the premise of the series, and I really like to try to read more Canadian authors than I normally do. And I couldn’t just buy the first one – what happened if I really liked it and wanted to read the next one IMMEDIATELY? Especially when all five of them are already published and the like? Yeah.

I picked this up a couple of days ago and got through it within a couple of hours. What a hard time putting it down!

One thing that worked really well for this book was that alternating chapters cover different periods in Driftwood’s life. So you get the present adventure that Driftwood is experiencing, with monsters and magic and the like, but then you also get to see bits and pieces of her life growing up. It gave a really good background knowledge of Driftwood, but didn’t feel like a crazy long exposition to get to the good part of the story. Definitely worked a lot better than if the parts about Driftwood’s past had all been at the beginning of the book. Makes me wonder what the rest of the books are going to be like, if they’re going to be in the same format…

This also helped with the massive character growth of Driftwood. We see her all the way from when she’s first born, to when she is an insecure 16 year old, to her facing the worst foe she’s ever imagined – a lion crossed with a giant spider crossed with an eagle (also known as an Eaderion). (Eaderion is quite possibly the most awkward word to say…)

I’m quite happy that I ended up getting all five of these books at once, because I’m very much looking forward to reading the rest of them, and am looking forward to experiencing more adventures with Driftwood and her friends.

The Bottom Line

Cute beginning to what I’m hoping with be an awesome series! I’m definitely looking forward to reading the rest of them – and thankfully I have them all on the TBR pile already. Definitely recommended to middle-grade readers and older readers who still love children’s stories.

Other Reviews

Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.

The Story:

From the back of the book:

Thirteen-year-old Josephine is not exactly thrilled to move to Awkward Falls, a town known only for its sauerkraut and its insane asylum, but she can’t resist snooping around the dilapidated mansion next door. She finds more than she bargains for when she is captured by the strange characters who live there: an ancient automaton who serves as a butler, a cat patched together with a few odd parts, and a boy genius named Thaddeus. Meanwhile, Fetid Stenchley, the most feared patient in the Asylum for the Dangerously Insane, has escaped and there is only one thing on his mind … revenge. Unfortunately for Thaddeus and Josephine, he’s headed their way, and his arrival will reveal more than a few secrets about Thaddeus’s mysterious past. Can these unlikely friends stop Stenchley and save Thaddeus from his greatest fear — the orphanage — before it’s too late?

Full of hilariously spooky details and surprising twists, Keith Graves delivers a suspenseful and engaging first novel.

The Response

I knew I would thoroughly enjoy this book right from the first paragraph:

The little town of Awkward Falls was known for two things: its canned sauerkraut and its insane asylum. Both had achieved notoriety for their repulsiveness. The canned sauerkraut contained cabbage, vinegar, and other appalling ingredients, the smell of which prevented most sane people from actually attempting to eat it. The Asylum for the Dangerously Insane contained insane murderers. Both were to be avoided at all costs, as one was likely to cause gas, and the other death.

It was, really, just so much fun, though not for the super-sensitive at heart. This is definitely a dark book – Thaddeus’ grandfather was a mad scientist, whose murderer was a cannibal. There are scary inventions in his lab, a reanimated corpse, a murderer that is after Thaddeus and Josephine… it’s could terrify some kids… but other kids will really love it.

Personally, I loved how creepy it was! It would’ve been a perfect Hallowe’en read, and I really wish that I had read it in October. The parts from Fetid Stenchley’s point of view certainly were disturbing – Graves created a very believable serial killer with some serious mental issues, who ended up being more pathetic and understandable than scary by the end of the book. I don’t know if I like the fact that I feel badly for Stenchley, and I actually kind of really want to know what happens to him after the end of this book…

One thing about this book did get on my nerves however… because this book takes place in Canada, all the police officers use words like “hoser” and “eh” – because that’s really how we Canadians talk in real life, donchaknow.

The Bottom Line

Cute book! Some parents may feel that these books are not suitable for their children, what with cannibals and the like, but some kids are absolutely going to love this. Recommended that parents read it before allowing their children to get their hands on this book. That said, I quite enjoyed it!

Other Reviews

Book Grotto, My Favourite Books, Book Sake, From the TBR Pile. Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.

The Story

From the back of the book:

During high summer in England, a dreadful warning disrupts Will Stanton’s peaceful world – the Dark is rising in its last and greatest bid to control the world. For Will is no ordinary boy, but the last-born of the immortal Old Ones, servants of the Light dedicated to keeping the world free.

The great battle catches up Will, his ageless master Merriman, and Bran, the Welsh albino boy, whose destiny ties him to the Light. Drawn in with them are the three Drew children, who are mortal, but have their own vital part to play in the story. In a quest through time and space that touches the most ancient myths of the British Isles, these six fight fear and death in the darkly brooding Welsh mountains. And it is there that Will and Bran are taken to the haunting, timeless Lost Land, to find the crystal sword that alone can ultimately vanquish the Dark.

The Response

Part of me is sad because this series is now over, but part of me is excited because finishing this book means that I am down one unfinished series. Rather the conflicting mix of feelings.

Anyway, yay, this was so awesome!

I’m still blown away by the way Cooper takes such a well-known mythology and weaves into it such an original story. This is so much more than your typical Arthurian mythos story. Random slight tangent – there were parts of how this story was told that very much reminded me of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books and Tolkien’s books – did she pull from their writing and narration style purposely?

It took me a very long time to warm up to Bran in The Grey King… and it took me just as long to get to like him again in this book. He’s just so… standoffish when he meets new people. And unfortunately, that comes across greatly when the story is told from someone else’s point of view. It’s hard to really get into a book when you really dislike one of the main characters.

Also, I have to say that the parts that I enjoyed the most were the ones where the Drew kids were mostly involved. It’s more easy to empathize and understand actual human characters than it is to with one of the Old Ones or with Bran… the parts with Will and Bran were almost boring, even though they had the most exciting stuff happen to them. Too bad.

Overall though, it was a thoroughly satisfying ending to a really well developed and imaginative series. I really wish I had read this when I was a kid – it would’ve by far been one of my favourite series of books.

So…. even though Bran wasn’t my favourite character…. can anyone recommend me some good Jane/Bran fanfic?

The Bottom Line

Yay awesome series! Loved! Definitely recommended to fantasy fans, to fans of children’s lit, and fans of the wonderful Arthurian legends!

Other Reviews

Things Mean A Lot, You Can Never Have Too Many Books, Working Title. Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.

The Story

From the back of the book:

There is a legend in North Wales about a harp of gold, hidden within a certain hill, that will be found by a boy and a while dog with silver eyes – a dog that can see the wind. Will Stanton knew nothing of this when he came to Wales to recuperate from a severe illness. But when he met a strange boy named Bran and Bran’s white dog Cafall, he began to remember. For Will was no ordinary boy, but the last born of the Old Ones, servants of the Light, immortals dedicated to saving the world from domination by the force of evil, the Dark. And it is Will’s duty, as he now learns to wake – with the sound of the lost golden harp – the six sleepers who must be roused from their long slumber in the ancient Welsh hills to prepare for the last dreadful battle between the Dark and the Light.

The Response

How much do I love it when books give you that total “OMG!” moment when you didn’t see something that, in retrospect, seems completely obvious? HOW did I not GET who Bran was? How did I not get who the third guardian of the harp was? With all of my obsession with Arthurian legend, HOW was I so blind to all of that? It was actually really exciting when I finally did comprehend, when I went back through the book to pick up clues that I had been ignoring previously, when I started doing searches on Cafall. Ah! So brilliant and fun!

So once again, I love how Cooper weaves the Arthurian myth so much into the foundation of this series. It’s one of the biggest draws about the books, for me.

One of the other things that I have said countless times about this series is how timeless it seems to be – there’s not really anything in it that says, “Hey! I was written back in the ’70s and therefore not relatable to kids today!” That said, I realized that it is actually quite different from modern books in one respect: everything is very black and white. Evil is evil, good is good. There’s no gray. I think that’s one of the things that modern fiction does really well – yes, the evil person can be evil, but they could be doing evil for misguided reasons, and aren’t really fully evil and KILL STABBITY HATE to the core. In that respect, The Dark is Rising Sequence seems to come off a bit juvenile in it’s good vs evil theme. (That said, good vs evil is still one of my favourite themes to read about.)

One thing that I found very beneficial when reading this book was how Cooper actually had a character explain how to pronounce how certain Welsh words sounded… or how certain letters sounded. It made for reading the place names much more fun because I didn’t just skim over the place name (like I typically do when I can’t sound it out in my head) – instead, I actually took the time to sit there and think how it would actually be pronounced. I think this will help greatly the next time I pick up Karen Marie Moning’s Fever series too, as some of the words seem to be similar.

The Bottom Line

Cute book! Thoroughly enjoyable and I cannot wait to read the last one in this series! I highly recommend this series to fans of Arthurian myth.

Other Reviews

Joy’s Blog, Angieville, Working Title, Things Mean A Lot. Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.

The Story

From the Chapters website:

“AND THOSE WHO ARE CROSSED, OR BARREN, OR WHO WOULD MAKE ANY WISH, MUST TOUCH THE GREENWITCH”

The Dark has stolen an object of great power — a golden grail that holds a vital secret. Will embarks on a new quest to reclaim the grail, and to drive back the Dark once again. But first he will need the help of three former grail seekers: Jane, Simon, and Barney Drew.

Learning to work together, they must take back the grail and retrieve the missing manuscript that unlocks its mystical secret. But the manuscript is located at the bottom of the sea, and their only hope of obtaining both grail and script is entangled in the mysterious ritual of the Greenwitch….

The Response

So. I read the second book in this series 18 months ago. In that time, I have managed to find copies of the fourth and fifth books in the series in used bookstores, but have not found the third one. For the past six months I have been looking for it in regular bookstores. It wasn’t until I found a lovely volume of all five books in the series at my aunt’s house that I finally read this. Yeah, I should’ve borrowed this from the library a long time ago.

This was such a charming story, and such a wonderful addition to this series! I love that the three children from the first book – Jane, Simon and Barney – finally meet up with Will from the second book. I didn’t fully understand how the first two books fit together until reading this one, as they both seemed to deal with such different stories – Merriman Lyon was really the only character in both those books, so it left me a little confused in all honesty.

But this book certainly made everything clear about how everything relates, made things super exciting, and now I am very excited to read more about what adventures our lovely children will be up to next!

I love that Cooper uses the Arthurian mythos in this book as a base and then builds her own mythology for these books on it. And even though the series has some themes that are prominent in so many other books – especially the good versus evil, light versus dark theme – it really does feel very fresh in The Dark is Rising.

I also can’t get over how, even thought these books were written over 30 years ago, they still feel like they could be taking place in present time. I love it when books have that timeless feel like this, because you know there’s as much magic now as there was when children were reading this when they were first published. You don’t get distracted by being all, “woah, people don’t use technology like that anymore! That’s so old school!”

Last thought: is it just me, or are all characters named Barney absolutely wonderful? I mean, really! Between little Barney in this book and the wonderful Barney Snaith (from LM Montgomery’s The Blue Castle), have you ever known a more wonderful name with more wonderful characters associated with it? Well, maybe not the purple dinosaur, but other than that what a wonderful name!

The Bottom Line

Loved this one so much! Am very much looking forward to finally being able to read the last two in the series now! Highly recommend this series to fans of both children’s fantasy and fans of Arthurian mythology.

Other Reviews

Things Mean A Lot, Working Title, Saving my Sanity, Libritouches. Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.

The Story

From the back of the book:

When The Fish, MacDonald Hall’s headmaster, separates Bruno and Boots for “the good of the school,” they are determined not to have new roomates!

This devilish twosome, with the help of the girls at Miss Scrimmage’s Finishing School, try every trick in the book to get rid of the flaky new kids. In desperation, they even try being good!

But nothing works. Is this great team of mischief-makers to be split up forever? Or will they find some way to change The Fish’s mind? No matter the plan, Bruno and Boots will risk it, because neither can get into half the trouble or have half the fun without the other!

The Response

I was in the mood for a reread of something I love. And really, what would be better than grabbing something that I positively loved as a kid? And so, Gordon Korman’s Bruno & Boots were called for.

LOVE.

This was every bit as wonderful as when I read it when I was a kid. It was hilarious and heartwarming and brilliant and OH MY GOODNESS. Okay, how unaccomplished should everyone who reads this feel? I know I rave about how Catherine Webb was 19 when she wrote the first Horatio Lyle book, but Korman was in freakin’ SEVENTH GRADE when he wrote this. Do you know what I was doing in seventh grade? I certainly wasn’t writing an awesome book, that’s for sure.

This book is absolutely bloody hilarious.

It just amazes me how well written these books are for someone that young. I mean, they have everything – mad hijinks, adventure, humour, character development, oh! It’s all there.

Every moment reading this book I had a big huge grin on my face. I gobbled it up and enjoyed every last second of it. It was everything that was expected, and was everything that I needed.

The Bottom Line

Really, everyone needs to read this. That is all. The end. Go read it NOW.

Other Reviews

Sassymonkey Reads, Tales of the Marvelous. Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.